Mother’s Day Poems to Show Your Love and Appreciation

In our opinion, we should appreciate our mothers every day (and tell them we do—out loud), but as we grow older and life gets in the way, we forget that sometimes they might need to hear that we love them and recognize how amazing they are. If you want to tell your mom you love her but aren’t necessarily a wordsmith, send her one of these Mother’s Day poems this year. Whether you need poems from a daughter or poems from a son, we’ve got you covered. If poems seem a little grandiose for you, think again. With short Mother’s Day poems that have just a few lines and simple Mother’s Day poems that aren’t filled with frill, there are Mother’s Day poems for everyone. Of course, moms are forced to see the funny side of life (a lot), so we included some funny Mother’s Day poems to make her smile. If your mother has passed and you’re unable to spend Mother’s Day with her this year, honor her life by sharing a Mother’s Day in heaven poem. Mothers are like superheroes, and unless you are one, you will never fully understand the love and selflessness that comes with motherhood. To all our amazing moms: Happy Mother’s Day. You deserve so much more, but hopefully these Mother’s Day poems will make you smile.

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Poems for Mom from Daughter

There’s nothing like the relationship between a mother and daughter, and these Mother’s Day poems from daughters touch on the special love between moms and daughters.

Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome

By Christina Rossetti

Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my loadstar while I go and come
And so because you love me, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honored name:
In you not fourscore years can dim the flame
Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws
Of time and change and mortal life and death.

The Envelope (Excerpt)

By Maxine Kumin

Like those old pear-shaped Russian dolls that open
at the middle to reveal another and another, down
to the pea-sized, irreducible minim,
may we carry our mothers forth in our bellies.

My Mother

By Ann Taylor

Who fed me from her gentle breast,
And hush’d me in her arms to rest,
And on my cheek sweet kisses prest?
My Mother.

When sleep forsook my open eye,
Who was it sung sweet hushaby,
And rock’d me that I should not cry?
My Mother.

O then, to thee, this rude and simple song,
Which breathes of thankfulness and love for thee,
To thee, my mother, shall this lay belong,
Whose life is spent in toil and care for me.

[Untitled Poem: Your arms were always open when I needed a hug.]

By Sarah Malin

Your arms were always open when I needed a hug.
Your heart understood when I needed a friend.
Your gentle eyes were stern when I needed a lesson.
Your strength and love guided me and gave me wings to soar.

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Poems for Mom from Son

They say you can tell the type of husband a boy will be from the way he treats his Mama. For all the Mamas out there who raised their sons to be gentlemen, here are some poems for mom from sons to celebrate Mother’s Day.

When all the others were away at Mass (Excerpt from Clearances)

By Seamus Heaney

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

The Laughing Child

By W. S. Merwin

When she looked down from the kitchen window
into the back yard and the brown wicker
baby carriage in which she had tucked me
three months old to lie out in the fresh air
of my first January the carriage
was shaking she said and went on shaking
and she saw I was lying there laughing
she told me about it later it was
something that reassured her in a life
in which she had lost everyone she loved
before I was born and she had just begun
to believe that she might be able to
keep me as I lay there in the winter
laughing it was what she was thinking of
later when she told me that I had been
a happy child and she must have kept that
through the gray cloud of all her days and now
out of the horn of dreams of my own life
I wake again into the laughing child

Tribute to Mother

By John Greenleaf Whittier

A picture memory brings to me;
I look across the years and see
Myself beside my mother’s knee.
I feel her gentle hand restrain
My selfish moods, and know again
A child’s blind sense of wrong and pain.
But wiser now, a man gray grown,
My childhood’s needs are better known.
My mother’s chastening love I own.

The Angel that presided ‘oer my birth

By William Blake

The Angel that presided ‘oer my birth
Said, “Little creature, form’d of Joy and Mirth,
“Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth.”

A Mother’s Love (Excerpt)

By James Montgomery

Within a heart of earthy mould,
As much of heaven as heart can hold,
Nor through eternity grows cold :This was that Mother’s Love.

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Short Mother’s Day Poems

When it comes to Moms, just saying a few words like “I love you,” “thank you,” or “you are appreciated” can mean the world. These short Mother’s Day poems have, though few, all the right words to tell her that you love her, you thank her, and you appreciate her.

To My Mother (Excerpt)

By Edgar Allan Poe

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of “Mother”

Another Poem for Mothers (Excerpt)

By Erin Belieu

How to describe
that world that mothers spin
and consume and trap

and love us in, that spreads
for years and men and miles?
Those particular hands that could

smooth anything: butter on bread,
cool sheets or weather. It’s
the wonder of them, good or bad,

those mother-hands that pet
and shape and slap,
that sew you together
the pieces of a better house
or life in which you’ll try
to live.

Mother (Excerpt)

By Lola Ridge

Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
reflecting each other obliquely
as in cracked mirrors . . .
beheld in your luminous spirit
their own reflection,
transfigured as in a shining stream,
and loved you for what they are not.

Excerpt from milk and honey

By Rupi Kaur

i struggle so deeply
to understand
how someone can
pour their entire soul
blood and energy
into someone
without wanting
anything in
return

-i will have to wait till i’m a mother

Excerpt from Dreaming Water

By Gail Tsukiyama

Mothers and their children are in a category all their own.
There's no bond so strong in the entire world.
No love so instantaneous and forgiving.

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Funny Mother’s Day Poems

You can’t live life as a mom without being able to find humor in (most) situations. These funny Mother’s Day poems will make her laugh.

God gave us fingers–Ma says, “Use your hanky.”
God gave us puddles–Ma says, “Don’t splash.”
Ma says, “Be quiet, your father is sleeping.”
But God gave us garbage can covers to crash.

God gave us fingers–Ma says, “Put your gloves on.”
God gave us raindrops–Ma says, “Don’t get wet.”
Ma says be careful, and don’t get too near to
Those strange lovely dogs that God gave us to pet.

God gave us fingers–Ma says, “Go wash ’em.”
But God gave us coal bins and nice dirty bodies.
And I ain’t too smart, but there’s one thing for certain–
Either Ma’s wrong or else God is.

The Lanyard

By Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly-
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-clothes on my forehead,
and then led me out into the air light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift - not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-toned lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Mother’s Chocolate Valentine

ByJack Prelutsky

I bought a box of chocolate hearts,
a present for my mother,
They looked so good I tasted one,
and then I tried another.

They both were so delicious
that I ate another four,
and then another couple,
and then half a dozen more.

I couldn’t seem to stop myself,
I nibbled on and on,
before I knew what happened
all the chocolate hearts were gone.

I felt a little guilty,
I was stuffed down to my socks,
I ate my mother’s valentine . . .
I hope she likes the box.

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Simple Mother’s Day Poems

If you want to get right to the point without too much flowery language, these simple Mother’s Day poems say everything that needs to be said—no more, no less.

To My Mother

By Robert Louis Stevenson

You too, my mother, read my rhymes
For love of unforgotten times,
And you may chance to hear once more
The little feet along the floor.

Rock Me to Sleep (Excerpt)

By Elizabeth Akers Allen

Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures,—
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.

Poems Done on a Late Night Car (Excerpt)

By Carl Sandburg

III. HOME

Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:
I heard it in the air of one night when I listened
To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness.

A Mother’s Love

By Helen Steiner Rice

A Mother's love is something
that no on can explain,
It is made of deep devotion
and of sacrifice and pain,
It is endless and unselfish
and enduring come what may
For nothing can destroy it
or take that love away . . .
It is patient and forgiving
when all others are forsaking,
And it never fails or falters
even though the heart is breaking . . .
It believes beyond believing
when the world around condemns,
And it glows with all the beauty
of the rarest, brightest gems . . .
It is far beyond defining,
it defies all explanation,
And it still remains a secret
like the mysteries of creation . . .
A many splendored miracle
man cannot understand
And another wondrous evidence
of God's tender guiding hand.

M-O-T-H-E-R

By Howard Johnson

“M” is for the million things she gave me,
“O” means only that she’s growing old,
“T” is for the tears she shed to save me,
“H” is for her heart of purest gold,
“E” is for her eyes with love-light shining,
“R” means right, and right she’ll always be
Put them all together, and they spell “Mother,”
A word that means the world to me.

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Mother's Day in Heaven Poems

At some point in our lives, our moms won’t be with us on Mother’s Day. Celebrate her life with these beautiful Mother’s Day in heaven poems.

For My Mother

By May Sarton

Once more
I summon you
Out of the past
With poignant love,
You who nourished the poet
And the lover.
I see your gray eyes
Looking out to sea
In those Rockport summers,
Keeping a distance
Within the closeness
Which was never intrusive
Opening out
Into the world.
And what I remember
Is how we laughed
Till we cried
Swept into merriment
Especially when times were hard.
And what I remember
Is how you never stopped creating
And how people sent me
Dresses you had designed
With rich embroidery
In brilliant colors
Because they could not bear
To give them away
Or cast them aside.
I summon you now
Not to think of
The ceaseless battle
With pain and ill health,
The frailty and the anguish.
No, today I remember
The creator,
The lion-hearted.

The courage that my mother had

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh, if instead she’d left to me
The thing she took into the grave!—
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.

Your Clothes

By Judith Kroll

Of course they are empty shells, without hope of animation.
Of course they are artifacts.

Even if my sister and I should wear some,
or if we give others away,

they will always be your clothes without you,
as we will always be your daughters without you.

The Persistence of Scent

By Cindy Williams Gutiérrez

Mother, you will persist in fragrances—
the nectar-scent of carrots, pineapple, pecans
baking in a two-layer cake. I will shorten
my mornings into hours of praise.

More than alchemy, fresh cilantro—
in pungent handfuls—will be sautéed with garlic,
onions, tomatoes. And like magic, beans
will turn into savories in my ordinary kitchen.

And the aroma of lilies will not be resisted.
I will plant tigers, stars, Easters, cannas, callas.
The rain on their talcum will conjure you—
your skin this satiny scent—

here, on the porch swing, just after a bath.
I will sprinkle lily petals on my pond,
dip my hand in this holy water,
rub your silk into my fingers.

But it is the tang of the sea that will return
your salt to soothe my wound. Here in this watery
womb of the earth—this place you love only
from a distance since you never learned to swim—
here I will stop holding my breath, inhale the sting.

When Great Trees Fall

By Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.